With the development of the Internet, more and more merchants have used e-commerce websites for business. Generally, a seller publishes product information at an e-commerce website through a client terminal. When a buyer searches desired published information at the e-commerce website, the buyer inputs a query at an interface provided by a back-end server of the e-commerce website. The query includes one or more core words or keywords. The back-end server matches the query with previously stored published information. If there is a match, the corresponding published information is returned.
Specifically, under the conventional techniques, the back-end server may use the following steps to match the query with the previously stored published information.
At a first step, the one or more keywords in the query are extended to obtain one or more queries related to the one or more keywords, such as multiple synonyms and homonyms.
At a second step, each of the keywords, the synonyms, and the homonyms is matched with the previously stored published information. If there is published information including at least one of the keywords, the synonyms, and the homonyms, such published information is returned as a successful matching result.
The conventional searching techniques have some disadvantages as listed below.
First, the return rate is low. When the query is extended, due to the restriction of accuracy and performance, the number of extended queries is limited. Thus, the matched published information will also be limited. There are few successful matching results and the return rate is low.
Second, the conventional searching techniques completely rely on characteristics of the query. When the query is extended, the extension is totally based on the characteristics of the query without considering characteristics of the published information (or documents). Thus, the number of extended queries is few and the accuracy of the extension is hardly guaranteed.
Third, the extension of query needs considering not only a relatedness between the original query and the extend queries but also a relatedness between the original query and the documents, and a relatedness between the extended queries and the documents. This makes the calculation too complicated and the calculation efficiency too low, and reduces the searching speed. There are also multiple calculation steps in the relatedness calculation. If the accuracy rate at any of the steps is low, the calculation result of the final relatedness will be inaccurate.